How to plot Bubble chart with plots outside axis area using Excel - excel

Im using Excel for Mac 2011 and I have the following figure
I would like to still show the bubbles outside of the available chart area, while keeping the maximum and minimum axes values unchanged.

Create an identical chart with the same data, but with axis limits that show the full bubbles. Then set all the formatting in the chart other than the bubbles to the equivalent of "none", i.e, no axis labels, chart outlines, gridlines, chart and plot borders, background color, etc.
With very careful sizing and positioning of this bubbles-only chart over the original chart, you can get the bubbles to extend beyond the plot area of the original. If the size or position of a bubble is a little off, modify the overlay chart's data by the tiny amount needed to get the bubble to cover the underlying original bubble. Turn off the formatting for the underlying bubbles as last step.
NOT programmatic, very trial and error, and fussy, of course, and I hope someone comes up with a more elegant way to achieve your goal. But I was able to get it to work on my Windows machine.

Related

Stacked bar graph showing only every other column

I am trying to create a 100% stacked bar graph in excel, however the resulting graph is only showing information for every other x-value. The x-axis is 134 values so I am not sure if the size is the problem or if it something else.
The X axis labels of a category axis (like in a a column or bar chart) is dynamically adjusted to the available space. When there are many columns/bars, not every column/bar will have a label. You can test that by making the chart wider/higher, to see how the X axis labels appear and disappar.
Having over 130 categorical items on an X axis is not good data visualisation. It's a rather horrible experience for the poor reader. Excel's behaviour is actually useful here. By not displaying all labels, it makes such a chart fairly unusable, and you may be inspired to think of better ways to visualise the data.
Maybe several smaller charts for segments of the data would be an option.

Creating a histogram with numerical x-axis in excel

I would like to create a bar-chart (or a histogram?) with vertical bars and a numerical x-axis , but I do not know how/where to start. I have MS-Excel and Origin-plot available with me. My intended chart would look like this:
You can more or less get what you want by adding and styling error bars appropriately to a scatter plot. The error bar is a simple way to force Excel to draw a line under/over the point.
Chart with data and error bars
Couple steps
Make an XY scatter chart
Add the error bars and delete the horizontal ones that come up
Set the negative error bar for the points to be equal to the same value that is being plotted
Set the positive error bar to 0 so it does not show
Change the formatting on the error bar to be thicker
Possible hide the initial dot shown so that it is bar only
You could take these steps and codify them with some VBA to prevent the tedious nature of doing this multiple times. Setting error bars is one of the worst activities to have to do continually.
I believe you should also be able to get your desired colors by adding multiple series. Possibly all the more reason to do this with VBA.

How do you alter the z axis length in a 3d excel plot?

I'm trying to plot 6 timeseries side by side in excel. The default 3d bar charts and surface plots almost do the right thing. The problem is the timeseries are laid on the z-axis as I expected but they're jammed so close together you can't read the labels.
I've tried changing the tick interval and re-sizing the chart. Re-sizing the chart only seems to affect the x and y axis lengths leaving the z-axis pretty much the same short useless length.
How do I change the z-axis length in Excel?
To adjust the z-axis size, do the following:
Select Layout/3D Rotation on the ribbon. A 3d rotation dialog box opens.
Ensure 3D Rotation is highlighted on the dialog's left pane and then deselect Autoscale at bottom the right pane in the dialog box.
To lengthen the z-axis, increase the Depth percentage from 100 to 200, 300 or whatever is needed to accommodate your z-axis labels.
A few other points - the graph itself is contained in a picture within the chart panel. You can lengthen the z-axis somewhat by clicking on the chart to select the chart's frame and then resize the frame.
If you're plotting time series data using the 3d bar graph, you can click on a specific bar and Excel will show you the datum value that produced the bar.
To look on the backside of the graph to see if there are hidden values, set the x-axis rotation to 135. Lengthening the z-axis alleviates the issue somewhat as it spreads the series further apart and lets you see "behind" the front series a bit better.

Multiple axis line chart in excel

I'm looking for a multiple axis line chart similar to the one in the image below, (which is a javascript chart made by amcharts).
Does excel have an option to draw charts line these? Note there are 3 Y axes, and 3 line charts allowing you to compare data.
Is it possible to get more than 3 data points, each with unique axis on one chart ?
It is possible to get both the primary and secondary axes on one side of the chart by designating the secondary axis for one of the series.
To get the primary axis on the right side with the secondary axis, you need to set to "High" the Axis Labels option in the Format Axis dialog box for the primary axis.
To get the secondary axis on the left side with the primary axis, you need to set to "Low" the Axis Labels option in the Format Axis dialog box for the secondary axis.
I know of no way to get a third set of axis labels on a single chart. You could fake in axis labels & ticks with text boxes and lines, but it would be hard to get everything aligned correctly.
The more feasible route is that suggested by zx8754: Create a second chart, turning off titles, left axes, etc. and lay it over the first chart. See my very crude mockup which hasn't been fine-tuned yet.
The picture you showd in the question is actually a chart made using JavaScript. It is actually very easy to plot multi-axis chart using JavaScript with the help of 3rd party libraries like HighChart.js or D3.js. Here I propose to use the Funfun Excel add-in which allows you to use JavaScript directly in Excel so you could plot chart like you've showed easily in Excel. Here I made an example using Funfun in Excel.
You could see in this chart you have one axis of Rainfall at the left side while two axis of Temperature and Sea-pressure level at the right side. This is also a combination of line chart and bar chart for different datasets. In this example, with the help of the Funfun add-in, I used HighChart.js to plot this chart.
Funfun also has an online editor in which you could test your JavaScript code with you data. You could check the detailed code of this example on the link below.
https://www.funfun.io/1/#/edit/5a43b416b848f771fbcdee2c
Edit: The content on the previous link has been changed so I posted a
new link here. The link below is the original link
https://www.funfun.io/1/#/edit/5a55dc978dfd67466879eb24
If you are satisfied with the result you achieved in the online editor, you could easily load the result into you Excel using the URL above. Of couse first you need to insert the Funfun add-in from Insert - My add-ins. Here are some screenshots showing how you could do this.
Disclosure: I'm a developer of Funfun
There is a way of displaying 3 Y axis see here.
Excel supports Secondary Axis, i.e. only 2 Y axis. Other way would be to chart the 3rd one separately, and overlay on top of the main chart.
An alternative is to normalize the data. Below are three sets of data with widely varying ranges. In the top chart you can see the variation in one series clearly, in another not so clearly, and the third not at all.
In the second range, I have adjusted the series names to include the data range, using this formula in cell C15 and copying it to D15:E15
=C2&" ("&MIN(C3:C9)&" to "&MAX(C3:C9)&")"
I have normalized the values in the data range using this formula in C15 and copying it to the entire range C16:E22
=100*(C3-MIN(C$3:C$9))/(MAX(C$3:C$9)-MIN(C$3:C$9))
In the second chart, you can see a pattern: all series have a low in January, rising to a high in March, and dropping to medium-low value in June or July.
You can modify the normalizing formula however you need:
=100*C3/MAX(C$3:C$9)
=C3/MAX(C$3:C$9)
=(C3-AVERAGE(C$3:C$9))/STDEV(C$3:C$9)
etc.
Taking the answer above as guidance;
I made an extra graph for "hours worked by month", then copy/special-pasted it as a 'linked picture' for use under my other graphs. in other words, I copy pasted my existing graphs over the linked picture made from my new graph with the new axis.. And because it is a linked picture it always updates.
Make it easy on yourself though, make sure you copy an existing graph to build your 'picture' graph - then delete the series or change the data source to what you need as an extra axis. That way you won't have to mess around resizing.
The results were not too bad considering what I wanted to achieve; basically a list of incident frequency bar graph, with a performance tread line, and then a solid 'backdrop' of hours worked.
Thanks to the guy above for the idea!
Best and Free ( maybe only) solution for this is google sheets.
i don't know whether it plots as u expected or not but certainly you can draw multiple axes.
Regards
keerthan

Partially missing gridlines on log-scale charts in Excel 2007

I'm using Excel 2007 to create a log-scale chart of numbers (specifically the Zimbabwean dollar exchange rate) over time. I'm using an x-y scatterplot and noticing one odd quirk.
The range of y values (numbers) spans a factor of about 10^30. On every chart I make using this data, half the gridlines are missing. Specifically, only the gridlines corresponding to the largest values show up. In fact, regardless of the total range only the top factor of 10^13 or so have gridlines. This is not dependent on the log base.
Am I doing something wrong? Is this a known bug? I can't find any references to this issue on google or microsoft's bug reports.
Silly work around as well, but if you are going to be presenting your graph in Powerpoint, you can make the background color of the graph "no fill" and then when you paste it into Powerpoint (I paste it as a PDF). You can draw grid lines and match them up with the ticks on the y-axis. Arrange your graph "bring to front" when you are finished drawing so that the lines won't appear in front of your data. You can group it all to make sure the lines don't shift while making your presentation and so that they re-size properly if you re-size your graph.
I'm having the same problem, it's definitely a bug.
Try a sequence 1, 10, 100, 1e+12, 1e+30 vs 0..4 and plot x,y scatter, and clearly the scale grid is messed-up even in linear, and in log is the behaviour you described.
My workaround was to make a transformation of the values and depict them scaled down (by a Million factor). That way the data the graph is handling is never above 10e9 (the value I started to hit issues).
So, my suggestion is: graph a Log version of the data (and clearly make a legend for it)
I was able to replicate your problem and come up with a pseudo-workaround.
The formatting goes a bit funny, but all the lines show up if you right-click on the axis, select Format Axis. Under the Axis Options, there is a Horizontal Axis Crosses setting. Changing it from Automatic to Maximum Axis Value causes all the gridlines to appear.
Ran into same thing: Will not show log grid lines for y-axis ranging below 1e-7. Have need for dynamic range of 1e5 down to 1e-15. Tagging auto or max will show grid, but puts axis labels in non-useful place for display.
My workaround: used Open Office to get what I needed. Could not find useful solution in Excel 2010.

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